Mar
28
Thu
Nietzsche and the Disadvantage of History: the Rise of Western Oikophobia. Benedict Beckeld @ Meyer Hall, Room 102, NYU
Mar 28 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

New York University’s Liberal Studies, in Collaboration with Nietzsche Circle, Presents:

Nietzsche and the Disadvantage of History: The rise of Western Oikophobia

More Info & RSVP:
If you like to attend, Please RSVP by sending email to Luke Trusso at luke.trusso@gmail.com

Sep
12
Thu
The Ethical Stance and the Possibility of Critique. Webb Keane @ Wolff Conference Room, D1106
Sep 12 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Critique is an assertion of values pitted against a state of affairs. To say that things should not be the way they are–to respond to questions such as ‘Why do I think this political or economic arrangement is wrong (and why should I care?)?’ implies an ethical stance. Critique thus draws together fact and value, domains that a long tradition of moral thought has argued exist on distinct planes. For there are dimensions of political life that are incomprehensible without this conjunction between ethical motivations and social realities. But if they are to have political consequences, such questions cannot be confined to private introspection. Scale matters. This talk looks at the articulation between everyday interactions and social movements to show the interplay among the first, second, and third person stances that characterize ethical life. Drawing ethnographic examples from American feminism and Vietnamese Marxism, it considers some of the ways in which ethical intuitions emerge, consolidate, and change, and argues that objectifications and the reflexivity they facilitate help give ethical life a social history.

Dec
4
Wed
Sebastian Purcell on Aztec Philosophy @ Brooklyn Public Library Information Commons Lab
Dec 4 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm

The last Philosophy in the Library talk of 2019 is coming up on December 4th at 7:00 PM! Sebastian Purcell is talking about “Good Habits Aren’t Enough: The Aztec Conception of Shared Agency!” If you’re into indigenous philosophy, the history of philosophy, virtue ethics, or collective action, you should enjoy it.

Brooklyn Public Philosophers is a forum for philosophers in the greater Brooklyn area to discuss their work with a general audience, hosted by the Brooklyn Public Library. Its goal is to raise awareness of the best work on philosophical questions of interest to Brooklynites, and to provide a civil space where Brooklynites can reason together about the philosophical questions that matter to them.

10/23 – Philosophy in the Library: Jennifer Morton on Education @ the Brooklyn Public Library’s Information Commons Lab // 7:30-9:00 PM

11/6 – Philosophy in the Library: Asia Ferrin on Mindfulness @ the Brooklyn Public Library’s Information Commons Lab // 7:30-9:00 PM

12/4 – Philosophy in the Library: Sebastian Purcell on Aztec Philosophy @ the Brooklyn Public Library’s Information Commons Lab // 7:00-9:00 PM

Apr
17
Fri
Chinese Philosophy and Virtue Epistemology @ Brower Commons Conference Rooms A & B
Apr 17 all-day

Rutgers Workshop on Chinese Philosophy (RWCP) was launched in 2012. Co-directed by Tao Jiang, Dean Zimmerman and Stephen Angle, RWCP is designed to build a bridge between Chinese philosophy and Western analytic philosophy and to promote critical engagement and constructive dialogue between the two sides, with the hope of bringing the study of Chinese philosophy into the mainstream of philosophical discourse within the Western academy. It is run every other year, usually in late spring.

5th Rutgers Workshop on Chinese Philosophy: Chinese Philosophy and Virtue Epistemology
The 5th RWCP will be held on Friday, April 17, 2020. In this one-day workshop, six scholars of Chinese philosophy will engage two leading virtue epistemologists, Ernest Sosa and Linda Zagzebski. The program and papers will be available in the spring of 2020, one month before the workshop. RSVP will become available at that time as well, and it is required for attendance. Please stay tuned.

FAQs

1. Where can I park?
Details will be provided as we get closer to the day of the workshop.
2. How can I get to the event on public transportation?
Take the NJ Transit Northeast Corridor Line to New Brunswick (njtransit.com). Make sure the train stops at New Brunswick as some might skip it during rush hours.

Contact Ms. Nancy Rosario (nr531@religion.rutgers.edu)

Co-sponsored by Rutgers Global-China Office and the Confucius Institute.

Apr
28
Tue
Deborah Mayo (Virginia Tech) @ CUNY Grad Center, rm 5307
Apr 28 @ 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm

Presented by Metro Area Philosophers of Science

Spring 2020 Schedule:

Anthony Aguirre (UCSC) – “Entropy in long-lived genuinely closed quantum systems”
6:30-8:30pm Tuesday Feb 4; NYU Philosophy Department (5 Washington Place), 3rd floor seminar room.

David Papineau (King’s College London & CUNY) – “The Nature of Representation”
4:30-6:30pm Tuesday March 3; CUNY Graduate Center (365 5th Ave, NYC), room 5307.

Jim Holt (Author of Why Does the World Exist?) – “Here, Now, Photon: Why Newton was closer to EM than Maudlin is”
4:30-6:30pm Tuesday April 7; CUNY Graduate Center (365 5th Ave, NYC), room 5307.

Deborah Mayo (Virginia Tech)
4:30-6:30pm Tuesday April 28; CUNY Graduate Center (365 5th Ave, NYC), room 5307.

Apr
14
Thu
With/In Environments: Reimagining Frameworks and Practices for Environmental Philosophy–Graduate Student Conference @ New School Dept. of Philosophy
Apr 14 – Apr 16 all-day

Since Plato, western philosophy has been set down a path paved by a disavowal of the sensuous, bracketed material bodies, and delimited aesthetic conceptions, leaving human beings and their built environments separated from the natural world. Such exclusions have left philosophy ill-equipped to deal with the various environmental crises we currently face, as economic rationality and utilitarian logic further de-animate the world and sharpen the human/nature distinction. Even the concept “environment” often, and ironically, brings with it implicit anthropocentric assumptions, conceptualizing, and thereby separating, the human as independent from the surrounding world and reinforcing the human/nature divide. As a result, our (mis)understandings of “nature” and “environment” may make us insensitive to and perpetuate, rather than address, climate change and other environmental catastrophes. To avoid ambiguities and clarify our understanding, we must ask: what role does Nature play within our theories and practices concerning so-called Environmental Philosophy? Furthermore, what spaces, practices, and questions are made possible when we broaden our understanding of “environment” to include a more robust conceptualization of the natural world and how the human being ought to be contextualized within it?

This conference asks how we might reorient the language and practices of philosophy in a way that can enable us to adequately respond to ongoing environmental crises. As a starting point, we propose a need to reimagine the concepts “human,” “nature,” and “environment,” as well as the reciprocal relations that constitute them. To recognize humans as natural organisms, we must reevaluate the sensuous, the material, and the aesthetic and the roles they play in our attempts to construct, understand, and preserve our environment(s). How should we make sense of our practices and our relations to those with whom we share our surroundings? How can we re-situate the human with/in the environment? Do we have the right tools to guide these investigations? How might philosophy look beyond itself—to literature, architecture, music, film, design—to better bring Environment, and thus the world, into view? In the spirit of this, we invite paper as well as project submissions from current graduate students in any discipline.

Possible Topics:

●        Environmental Aesthetics: Re-Considering Beauty + the Sublime

●        Environmental Justice + Restorative Justice + Transformative Justice

●        Environmental Ethics + Sustainable Practices

●        Diversity + Biodiversity

●        Capitalism and Climate

●        Eco-phenomenology

●        Eco-deconstruction

●        Environmental Racism/Racist Environments

●        Ecofeminist conceptions of nature

●        Land Rights and Property Relations

●        Posthumanism + Object Ontologies

●        Afrofuturism + Technological Utopias

●        Environmental Ethics In Narratives

●        Mastery of Nature in Philosophy

●        Anarcho-primitivism

●        Queer and Trans Ecologies

●        Local and Global Ecologies

●        Regionalisms and Globalisms in the Ecological Imagination

 

Confirmed Conference Keynotes:

Sandra Shapshay, CUNY Graduate Center, New York

Emanuele Coccia, École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS), Paris

Dates and Location:

This conference will be held at the New School for Social Research in New York City from Thursday, April 14, to Saturday, April 16. While we (tentatively) plan to hold the conference primarily in-person we would also like to provide a hybrid option for those who would prefer to participate remotely. Following the conference, on Sunday, April 17, all participants and attendees are invited to participate in a conference hike in Cold Spring, NY (about an hour and a half north of NYC and accessible by the Metro North commuter train).

Call for Papers: Submission Procedure:

Please submit complete papers (Word Limit: 3500) and an abstract of 250 words or less by January 1st in the form of a Word attachment (.docx) or PDF to WithInEnvironments@gmail.com. Please prepare your submission for blind review by removing any identifying information from the body of the paper. In your email please include your name, affiliation, and paper title. Notification of acceptance will be sent by January 15.

Call for Projects: Submission Procedure:

Please submit a project description (Word Limit: 1000) by December 1st in the form of a Word attachment (.docx) to WithInEnvironments@gmail.com, as well as:

For Visual Arts projects: submit 5 images of your work as .jpeg.

For Performing Arts projects: submit video/ audio of your work in .mp4 format

Please prepare your submission for blind review by removing any identifying information. In your email please include your name, affiliation, and project title. Notification of acceptance will be sent by January 15.

If you have any questions please email WithInEnvironments@gmail.com

 

Oct
27
Thu
Naked Statistical Evidence and Verdictive Justice. Sherri Roush (UCLA) @ 716 Philosophy Hall
Oct 27 @ 4:10 pm – 6:00 pm

Naked Statistical Evidence and Verdictive Justice

Mar
16
Thu
The Historical Formation of Races. Linda Alcoff @ CUNY Grad Center 5318
Mar 16 @ 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm

This talk will develop the idea that racial identities are best understood as formed through large scale historical events, and that this genesis can only be obscured by disavowals of racial categories as conceptually mistaken and inevitably morally pernicious.  In this sense, races are formed not simply as ideas, or ideologies and policies, as many social constructivists about race argue, but as forms of life with associated patterns of subjectivity including, as a wealth of social psychology has shown, presumptive attitudes and behavioral dispositions (Jeffers 2019; Steele 2010; Sullivan 2005). Because they are historical formations, racial identities are thoroughly social, contextual, variegated internally, and dynamic. It is history that will alter them, not merely policy changes.

Nov
16
Thu
From Harlem to the World: Philosophy from a Center of the Black World with Questions for the 21st Century. Lewis Gordon (UConn) @ North Academic Building, rm 1/201
Nov 16 @ 6:00 pm – 7:15 pm

The speaker will be Prof. Lewis Gordon of the University of Connecticut, on “From Harlem to the World: Philosophy from a Center of the Black World with Questions for the 21st Century.” Gordon will talk about worldliness and public aspects of philosophy, placing them in the context of Harlem both at City College and the public world of Africana philosophy from Du Bois to Malcolm X to contemporaries such as Nathalie Etoke. He will conclude with a set of questions for 21st century philosophy to consider.

Lewis R. Gordon is Professor and Head of the Department of Philosophy at UCONN-Storrs; Honorary President of the Global Center for Advanced Studies; Honorary Professor in the Unit for the Humanities at Rhodes University, South Africa; and Distinguished Scholar at The Most Honourable PJ Patterson Centre for Africa-Caribbean Advocacy at The University of the West Indies, Mona. He co-edits the journal Philosophy and Global Affairs, the Rowman & Littlefield book series Global Critical Caribbean Thought, and the Routledge-India book series Academics, Politics and Society in the Post-Covid World. He is the author of many books, including, most recently, Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization (Routledge, 2021) and Fear of Black Consciousness (hardcover, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022; in the UK, London: Penguin Books, 2022), Picador paperback 2023. He is the 2022 recipient of the Eminent Scholar Award from the Global Development Studies division of the International Studies Association.

Mar
28
Thu
Strange Returns: Racism, Repetition and Working Through the Past presented by Eyo Ewara @ Wolff Conference Room/D1103
Mar 28 @ 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

This talk reads contemporary debates about structural racism and US history from the perspective of philosophical questions about identity and difference. While many people have argued that America needs to come to terms with or “work through” the racism in its history that has shaped and continues to shape its present structures, it remains difficult to explain what connects this past and the present. Are we talking about one racism with many different past and present forms? Or are there multiple racisms that only share some similar features? In this talk, I draw attention to how these divisions play out particularly in contemporary Black Studies and argue that the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze can offer us resources for thinking about these questions through his discussions of repetition. I argue that understanding our conversations about structural racism and history as conversations about a racism that repeats, can help us to better understand why racism seems to reappear, how to think its disparate forms together, and what presuppositions operate in many attempts to “work through” the past.

Bio: Eyo Ewara is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. His teaching and research explores the relationships between 20th Century Continental Philosophy, Critical Philosophy of Race, and Queer Theory.  His work has appeared in Theory and Event, Puncta, Philosophy Today, Critical Philosophy of Race, Political Theology, and other venues. His current research project is particularly interested in engaging work in Continental Philosophy, Queer Theory, and Black Studies to address questions of identity and difference amongst concepts of race, forms of racism, and forms of anti-racism. How can we better account for the relations between at times radically disparate concepts, structures, and practices such that they can all specifically and recognizably be called racial? What might our account of these relations say about our ability to address racism’s harms?